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Forum:Wikia has failed us yet again
I can't thank Brandon Rhea enough for bringing this to my attention. As stated on this forum on SWFanon, at some point within the last several weeks, Wikia (aka, Uberfuzzy) disabled editing for unregistered users not only on SWFanon, but for Darthipedia as well. This was done to prevent vandalism from Assaulthead, a recently blocked user from the fanon wiki who has been trolling Darth and creating such wonderful articles as "Brandon is an evil Nazi". Brandon can put a "This is not a “bash Wikia” thread" notice on the fanon forum, but I'm letting you know right now there's going to be quite a bit of bashing here, all reasonable however. Now I don't necessarily agree with letting unregistered users edit, but it does serve its purpose and in Darthipedia's case, we've allowed anons for far too long. The fact that Uberfuzzy did this without so much as asking a single administrator doesn't gripe me at all. I'm used to waking up in the morning and finding the staffers abusing the powers when and where they feel like it. Do I like it? No. Not in the least. But every wiki hosted by Wikia is their own personal stomping ground and there's not a goddamn thing anyone can do about it. All's fair in love and war. No, what gripes me is the fact that he, or any of the other staffers, didn't even give us a notice. Not a friendly reminder, not a memo on the IRC, not even a fucking tweet on Twitter something Wikia has become increasingly obsessed with. Instead, we're left to find out ourselves when some guy from New Jersey mysteriously logs out while editing due to a Wikia error. Oh, but there's more. Not only does it disable editing from unregistered users, it also disables editing from users who haven't confirmed their email address. Now one might ask "how exactly does this prevent Assaulthead from creating a multitude of articles regarding Brandon Rhea's Nazism, factual or otherwise?" And here is your answer: It doesn't. Quite clearly stated, once you enter in an email address in your preferences and then confirm the account via email, everything's fine and dandy. And has it prevented one vandal from editing? No, and it never will. It has instead possibly halted dozens of potentially good and useful edits to the site. Words can't even begin to describe how utterly useless the staff are right now, but the fact that Brandon Rhea has had to create a fucking petition on the subject sums it up perfectly. Now in case you don't remember this, back in 2007 it was decided that we would allow anons to edit and instead place messages on their talk pages urging them to sign up. Wikia has once again imposed their own boundaries they setup in the first place and completely disregarded the opinions of the community. Why even bother creating ownership policies if you're just going to blow them off? So, in short, we're all stuck with this until Wikia decides what to do. They have no clue how long it's going to last, but it will last. We either go through the personal hell of contacting Uberfuzzy/Special:Contact (which happens to lead straight to Uberfuzzy) or we don't. This is not a blog posting, (there's places for that, and Wikia isn't one of them) nor is it a message to incite Wikia bashing. It is an announcement made by a member of the Darthipedia administration to the community, completely neutral by our standards. Cheers. — SG ''' ''needed'' 03:56, October 28, 2009 (UTC) Discussion Wow. Up until this point, the lack of anon edits had gone unnoticed, but now it makes one wonder why we didn't figure this out sooner. Uberfuzzy has interfered with Darthipedia's administration before, so the fact that this has happened doesn't surprise me, but the scope of it does. Wikia "ownership" policy is, per Geeky, now out the window; I'm not sure which is worse, the lawsuit waiting to happen (in Brandon's words) that is MagCloud, or this utter failure to adhere to policy by the site's owners. As far as what to do about it, I can't see any other recourse than to spam the shit get vocal to the entire Wikia staffer community about this incident, and to demand that they rescind their actions forthwith.--[[User:Goodwood|Goodwood]] ''Wit and Weirdo Extraordinaire'' 04:07, October 28, 2009 (UTC) * Just to clear up how "some guy from New Jersey" (=P) found this out, it wasn't because I was accidentally logged out due to a Wikia error. I discovered a comment here about how a user couldn't edit Star Wars Fanon, and then followed up on Uberfuzzy's talk page where I got the official word. P.S. Goodwood, the "lawsuit waiting to happen" was actually your words. I just shamelessly stole them. =P - Brandon Rhea (talk) 04:09, October 28, 2009 (UTC) To be quite honest, I've grown tired of expecting Wikia to show us the respect we deserve and ask. The only way I can see around this is to ask Fuzzy to undo it, although I've little hope of this working. I no longer feel the slightest bit sympathetic for the creation of this. --''Darth tom'' Message me 07:46, October 28, 2009 (UTC) In all honesty the "assaulthead" vandalism wasn't really that a big deal on darthipedia, we have all managed to remove his vandalism pretty fast in the past and move on to our regular routine, what bugs me the most is that we decided as a community not to disable anon editing in the COB sometime ago. '''Madclaw [[User talk:Madclaw|''Shyriiwook!]] 10:45, October 28, 2009 (UTC) : I have just sent an email to requesting this setting be undone. 'Madclaw' [[User talk:Madclaw|''Shyriiwook!]] 11:09, October 28, 2009 (UTC) *Wikia has once again shown that they do not care about what our, or any other, Wikia community wants. This community has previously decided to allow anons to edit the wiki, the only thing worse then just going against this consensus and banning anons from editing is doing it without telling us. I hope we receive a positive reply to Madclaw's message soon. --[[User:Jedimca0|'Jedimca0']](Do or Do Not, There is No Try) 11:33, October 28, 2009 (UTC) *This is sincerely an insult to our community. We were getting along dealing with this vandal before Wikia interrupted. And the fact that, as Mr Rhea has said, it prevents users who wish not to register their email accounts from editing, which is an even greater insult. Other than this, my opinion has already been stated by others. This just isn't right. The Almighty Ninja [[User talk:StarNinja99|''That chick that cried!]] 20:45, October 28, 2009 (UTC) **It appears anons are now able to edit. I just managed to successfully create an article logged out with no problems whatsoever, save for the new text editor. Perhaps Wikia finally did something right. — 'SG ' 'needed' 05:26, October 29, 2009 (UTC) It's also been re-enabled on SWF. - Brandon Rhea (talk)` *Well, that's a load off. 05:51, October 29, 2009 (UTC) I'm closing this since the situation has been resolved. 'Madclaw' [[User talk:Madclaw|''Shyriiwook!]] 07:29, October 29, 2009 (UTC)